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You may have felt a little schadenfreude when you read the $Billion reduction in the value of Facebook. Not unlike the 2008 crash, this money has gone to money heaven, and will probably never reappear.

However, something else is also dying as the Facebook and Google scorched earth policy rips the heart out of the paid-for newspaper advertising revenue. It’s journalism, as the business model of newspapers comes under threat, the newsroom can no longer afford a full roster of journalists.

The effect is both National and Local, but the local impact is much more significant as there is no one else to scrutinise local political and public services.

In New Jersey, the state’s lawmakers will begin to fund community journalism, and this will include for-profit as well as non-profit groups.

I sadly can’t see this coming to our communities anytime soon; who would be prepared to pay for such a subsidy? It’s a real dilemma, failure to scrutinise local political decision making will lead to poorer decisions. In turn, this will lead to a more significant waste of public money. Undoubtedly more than the cost of the subsidy in the first place.

I think there may be three practical steps we can all take:

Find our local news site; it may be a newspaper or a community group, sign up and join the discussion.

Attend local Council and Public service meetings and remember to ask a question, how they handle the response may tell you a great about how they feel about scrutiny.

Support national and regional newspapers through their subscription services, pay a little to benefit a great deal.

About John Coulthard

If you’re sure about something, you can guarantee that someone else not very far away will be sure about the opposite. Our views and opinions are a product of our cultural conditioning. Sometimes the effect of failing to take a broader perspective is benign, but more often in doing so, you exclude, underestimate or marginalise whole segments of society. I aim to try to see the gaps in provision, challenge the assumptions and perhaps provide a broad angle view of my small part of the world.